1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a three dimensional scaffold and a method of fabricating the same, and more particularly, to a three dimensional scaffold having a three dimensional structure which can be easily fabricated through a lithography process generally used in the semiconductor manufacturing process, and a method of fabricating the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
The studies of pathology and biotechnology, such as diagnosis of disease or evaluation on the effect of medicinal therapy, have actively progressed as one of the leading future technologies. As one of the methods for accelerating such studies, a biochip has been studied and developed.
For the effective use of the biochip in biomedical engineering and related fields, however, target cells should be abundantly cultured in the biochip through a repeatedly practicable method. A three dimensional scaffold has been proposed for use as a structure for the cell culture in this manner.
FIGS. 1 to 3 are photographs of three dimensional scaffolds fabricated according to existing methods.
As illustrated in FIGS. 1 to 3, the existing three dimensional scaffolds have a conformational structure containing numerous pores on the surface thereof. Therefore, it is possible to effectively culture a large quantity of cells by using such three dimensional scaffolds, which advance the adoption of biotechnology as a kind of industrial technology.
However, since all the existing three dimensional scaffolds described in the figures have an irregular or non-uniform shape, it is very difficult to repeatedly manufacture a three dimensional scaffold having a same structure.
To overcome such a problem, U.S. Pat. No. 6,686,184 discloses a method capable of repeatedly fabricating microstructures with uniform features, which can be used in the manufacture of microfluidic systems.
However, even though this method can fabricate a repeatable microstructure through a lithography process using a photoresist in fabricating the microfluidic systems, it has a disadvantage in that the layer of each structure has to be adhered to each other after their patterns are independently formed or each layer has to be formed by adhering one layer to another layer, one by one.
Therefore, the existing methods cannot be practically applied to the fabrication of a conformational structure due to the very complicated process, thereby making it impossible to manufacture a three dimensional scaffold having a regular or uniform structure.